In Translation Quotes

“It's quite clear : an outsider can, on principle, only value foreign literature that translates well; the truly great artists of language and the fecund experimenters are inaccessible to him; are usually unknown to him in fact !”
― Arno Schmidt, Two Novels: The Stony Heart and B/Moondocks

“Knowing people can mean so many things. It's like books: there are plenty of gradations between the books one has read and those one hasn't. There are the books one has heard of, those with a plot or style we already know by heart, those we can tell by their cover, those whose jacket copy we've read. Those we want to read and those we never will. One can also read a book and forget it -- in fact, that's my specialty -- or just skim through it. It's the same with people.”
― Cécile David-Weill, The Suitors: A Novel